My piece is a self-portrait where I am unmasked. I have never done a self-portrait before so this was very new to me. I decided to choose cubism because it fascinated me and I have barely practiced it in the past. As I drew squares and triangles I realized that I could not only use these to change the form of my face but to magnify certain areas. That was when I decided that this piece was going to help me unmask my own thoughts about my appearance. I was going to magnify my insecurities. I chose to represent my face as pink because I am always nervous and sweaty and as a result of that I have a reddish face. My hair is fragmented because I have a very annoying middle part that gets in the way and makes me feel bad about the appearance of my hair. Most days I wake up with bed head with little to no motivation to fix it and this makes me look bad so I also decided to magnify this. My ears are different sizes because when I was a child I played with them which changed their form resulting in a larger right ear and smaller left ear. I exaggerated this to show how I think of my ears. They are also covered in red marks. These red marks represent my eczema and how it is irritating and disgusting to observe. I also represented my nose being large and absolutely covered in pores to show that this is all I can see when I look in the mirror. My eyes are heavily textured because at that time I learned of Lucian Freud and I wanted to use his style of painting for my eyes. They are textured this way to show the different ways I cry. Small tears where I simply have moderation or big streams of tears that last too long, which happen less. My eyes have exaggerated bags because I often feel bad about the way my face looks when I don’t get enough sleep. My mouth is yellow because I feel awkward with the way my teeth look, I also suffered an injury at a young age which has caused me to feel bad about the way my teeth look. The area surrounding my mouth is yellow because my mouth is all that I see when I look at that area of my face. My mouth is also upside down because I always try to smile and be happy but when the mouth is turned upside down I am really just in anguish. The red dots all over my face represent the mark that zits make right when they should be gone. My chin has a very distinct butt surrounded by gross little hairs. This is my facial hair and I beat myself up most for it because it is so easy to get rid of that every time I see myself with it I hate it. My shirt is a cool shirt with a fun design, but if you look carefully you will see that there are little bits of blood on it. This is from my eczema which I won’t stop scratching. The fact that this is seeping into my shirt shows that my own method of self-destruction will destroy the things I like most.
My piece relates to the theme of resilience because it shows how I have been able to recover from the hardship of lockdown through the art I have been able to create.